Even if she fails miserably and becomes a trivia question in history, I think she has already earned her own DB topic.

One network host is up in arms that Palin isn't doing interviews her first minute on the ticket while another ABC is sending Charlie Gibson to Alaska this week for an interview. I agree with protecting her a little at first from the wolves as she will get plenty of exposure including the VP debate. My free advice is that they should offer her for an extra debate, Palin v. Barack Obama, one on one, anytime/any place, and find out quickly which side is more afraid of their next gaffe.

If you want to preview for the VP debate you can see a Gubernatorial debate from 2006 on C-Span at http://cspanjunkie.org/?p=407 Unlike her current opponent, she makes her point clearly and then stops talking. The woman has talent.

Sarah Palin is not such a small-town girl after all By James Bennett Last Updated: 12:01am BST 09/09/2008

It is clear that few in America, let alone Britain, have any idea what to make of Sarah Palin. The Republicans' vice-presidential candidate confounds the commentators because they don't understand the forces that shaped her in the remote state of Alaska.

John McCain and Sarah PalinThus, most coverage dwells on exotica - the moose shooting, her Eskimo husband - combined with befuddlement at how a woman can go from being mayor of a town of 9,000, to governor, to prospective VP within the space of a few years.

But, having worked with Alaskans, I know something of the challenge she has faced, and why - contrary to what Democrats think - it could make her a powerful figure in the White House.

The first myth to slay is that she is a political neophyte who has come from nowhere. In fact, she and her husband have, for decades, run a company in the highly politicised commercial fishing industry, where holding on to a licence requires considerable nous and networking skills.

Her rise from parent-teacher association to city council gave her a natural political base in her home town of Wasilla. Going on to become mayor was a natural progression. Wasilla's population of 9,000 would be a small town in Britain, and even in most American states.

But Wasilla is the fifth-largest city in Alaska, which meant that Palin was an important player in state politics.

Her husband's status in the Yup'ik Eskimo tribe, of which he is a full, or "enrolled" member, connected her to another influential faction: the large and wealthy (because of their right to oil revenues) native tribes.

All of this gave her a base from which to launch her 2002 campaign for lieutenant (deputy) governor of Alaska.

She lost that, but collected a powerful enough following to be placated with a seat on, and subsequently the chairmanship of, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which launched her into the politics of Alaska's energy industry.

Palin quickly realised that Alaska had the potential to become a much bigger player in global energy politics, a conviction that grew as the price of oil rose. Alaska had been in hock to oil companies since major production began in the mid-1970s.

As with most poor, distant places that suddenly receive great natural-resource wealth, the first generation of politicians were mesmerised by the magnificence of the crumbs falling from the table. Palin was the first of the next generation to realise that Alaska should have a place at that table.

Her first target was an absurd bureaucratic tangle that for 30 years had kept the state from exporting its gas to the other 48 states. She set an agenda that centred on three mutually supportive objectives: cleaning up state politics, building a new gas pipeline, and increasing the state's share of energy revenues.

This agenda, pursued throughout Palin's commission tenure, culminated in her run for governor in 2006. By this time, she had already begun rooting out corruption and making enemies, but also establishing her bona fides as a reformer.

With this base, she surprised many by steamrollering first the Republican incumbent governor, and second, the Democratic former governor, in the election.

Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.

The surprise is not that she has been in office for such a short time but that she has succeeded in each of her objectives. She has exposed corruption; given the state a bigger share in Alaska's energy wealth; and negotiated a deal involving big corporate players, the US and Canadian governments, Canadian provincial governments, and native tribes - the result of which was a £13 billion deal to launch the pipeline and increase the amount of domestic energy available to consumers. This deal makes the charge of having "no international experience" particularly absurd.

In short, far from being a small-town mayor concerned with little more than traffic signs, she has been a major player in state politics for a decade, one who formulated an ambitious agenda and deftly implemented it against great odds.

Her sudden elevation to the vice-presidential slot on the Republican ticket shocked no one more than her enemies in Alaska, who have broken out into a cold sweat at the thought of Palin in Washington, guiding the Justice Department's anti-corruption teams through the labyrinths of Alaska's old-boy network.

It is no surprise that many of the charges laid against her have come from Alaska, as her enemies become more and more desperate to bring her down. John McCain was familiar with this track record and it is no doubt the principal reason that he chose her.

Focusing on the exotic trappings of Alaskan culture may make Palin seem a quaint and inexplicable choice. But understanding the real background of her steady rise in politics suggests that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are underestimating her badly. In this, they join two former Alaskan governors, a large number of cronies, and a trail of enemies extending back over a decade.

Running AlaskaSeptember 10, 2008One rap on Sarah Palin's qualifications to be Vice President is that she governs one of our least populated states, with a budget of "only" $12 billion and 16,000 full-time state employees. On the other hand, it turns out that the Governor's office in Alaska is one of the country's most powerful.

For more than two decades Thad Beyle, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, has maintained an index of "institutional powers" in state offices. He rates governorships on potential length of service, budgetary and appointment authority, veto power and other factors. Mr. Beyle's findings for 2008 rate Alaska at 4.1 on a scale of 5. The national average is 3.5.

Only four other states -- Maryland, New Jersey, New York and West Virginia -- concentrate as much power in the Governor's office as Alaska does, and only one state (Massachusetts) concentrates more. California may be the nation's most populous state, but its Governor rates as below-average (3.2) in executive authority. This may account in part for Arnold Schwarzenegger's poor legislative track record. The lowest rating goes to Vermont (2.5), where the Governor (remember Howard Dean) is a figurehead compared to Mrs. Palin.

In Alaska, the Governor has line-item veto power over the budget and can only be overridden by a three-quarters majority of the Legislature. In 1992, the year Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was elected President, his state budget was $2 billion and among the smallest in the country. Compared to that, Sarah Palin is an executive giant.

Feminist Army Aims Its Canons at PalinBecause womanhood is a state of mind.

By Jonah Goldberg

Whether or not Sarah Palin helps John McCain win the election, her greatest work may already be behind her. She’s exposed the feminist con job.

Don’t take my word for it. Feminists have been screaming like stuck pigs 24/7 since Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate. (Are pig metaphors completely verboten now?)

Feminist author Cintra Wilson writes in Salon (a house organ of the angry left) that the notion of Palin as vice president is “akin to ideological brain rape.” Presumably just before the nurse upped the dosage on her medication, Wilson continued, “Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She’s such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it’s easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.”

And that’s one of the nicer things she had to say. Really.

On Tuesday, Salon ran one article calling Palin a dominatrix (“a whip-wielding mistress”) and another labeling her a sexually repressed fundamentalist no different from the Muslim fanatics and terrorists of Hamas. Make up your minds, folks. Is she a seductress or a sex-a-phobe?

But this any-weapon-near-to-hand approach is an obvious sign of how scared the Palin-o-phobes are.

Gloria Steinem, the grand mufti of feminism, issued a fatwa anathematizing Palin. A National Organization for Women spokeswoman proclaimed Palin more of a man than a woman. Wendy Doniger, a feminist academic at the University of Chicago, writes of Palin in Newsweek: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”

It’s funny. The left has been whining about having their patriotism questioned for so long it feels like they started griping in the Mesozoic era. Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.

Since we know from basic science that Palin is a woman — she’s had five kids, for starters — it’s clear that these ideological thugs aren’t talking about actual, you know, facts. They’re doing what people of totalitarian mind-sets always do: bully heretics, demonize enemies, whip the troops into line.

The academic feminist left has scared the dickens out of mainstream men and women for so long, the liberal establishment is terrified to contradict feminists’ nigh-upon-theological conviction that female authenticity is measured by one’s blind loyalty to left-wing talking points. This is a version of the Marxist doctrine of “false consciousness,” which holds that you aren’t an authentic member of the proletariat unless you agree with Marxism.

It works like this: If you don’t agree with feminist scolds, you’re not a real woman, even if you’re a very feminine working mom. But even if you’re an actual man — never mind a childless feminist who looks like a Bulgarian weightlifter in drag — you’re a “real woman” solely because you nod your head like a windup clapping monkey every time you read the latest editorial in Ms. Recall how they christened Bill Clinton the “first female president,” too.

But here’s the fun part. Feminists are hooked on their own Kool-Aid; they actually believe the stuff they say. The shrill, angry women you see on MSNBC claiming to speak for all women actually think they do. But they don’t. They speak for a few left-leaning women in faculty lounges, editorial boardrooms and that’s about it.

Mainstream liberals have been in captivity for so long, eagerly accepting their ritual beatings, that they’ve gotten Stockholm Syndrome and convinced themselves that Gloria Steinem and Co. are the authentic voices of women everywhere.

Stop laughing.

The reality is that there is an actual reality out there, and it doesn’t look anything like what feminists see beyond the rims of their ideological blinders.

For instance, immediately after the Palin announcement, the priestesses not only ruled it “sexist” for McCain to pick a woman but also said it was strategically dumb — “insulting to women!” — to think any real women would switch support from the beatified Obama to that old devil McCain.

Well, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, there’s been a 20-point swing among white women from Obama-Biden to McCain-Palin. Did this “ideological brain rape” suddenly induce an epidemic of false consciousness?

Of course not. Nor are women mindlessly switching loyalties because there’s a woman on the ticket. What the Palin pick has demonstrated, however, is that the Feminist-Industrial Complex is a fraud. Disagreeing with self-described feminists doesn’t mean you’re anti-woman. Usually it just means you’re sensible.

And for that lesson alone, we should all be grateful.

— Jonah Goldberg is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

How did Sarah Palin become a symbol of women's empowerment? And how did I, a die-hard feminist, end up terrified at the idea of a woman in the White House? Femenists are definitely wrestling with Palin's candidacy.

By Rebecca Traister

Sep. 11, 2008 | I have been dreaming about Sarah Palin. (Apparently, I'm not alone.) I wish I could say that I'd been conjuring witty, politically sophisticated nightmares in which she leads troops into Vancouver or kindergartners in the recitation of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." But, alas, mine have been nonsensical, kiddie-style doozies in which she kidnaps my cats, or enjoys a meal with my girlfriends while I bang on the restaurant window. There's also a chilling one, in which a scary witch stands on a wind-swept hill and leers at me.

What troubles me most -- aside from the fact that there is suddenly a Republican candidate potent enough to so ensnare my psyche -- is my sense that these are dreams in which it matters very much that Palin is a woman.

I have been writing about feminism for more than five years; I have been covering the gender politics of the 2008 presidential election for more than two. And I am absolutely gobsmacked by the intensity of my feelings about Sarah Palin. I am stunned not only by the way in which her candidacy has changed the rules in the gender debate, or how it is twisting and garbling the fight for women's progress. But I'm also startled by how Palin herself is testing my own beliefs about how I react to women in power.

My feelings about Palin have everything to do with her gender -- a factor that I have always believed, as a matter of course, should neither amplify nor diminish impressions of a person's goodness or badness, smartness or dumbness, gravitas or inconsequence. Why are my rules changing?[

I am still perfectly capable of picking out the sexism being leveled against the Alaska governor by the press, her detractors and her own party. Every time someone doubts Palin's ability to lead and mother simultaneously, or considers her physical appeal as a professional attribute, or calls her a "maverette," I bristle.

But that's the easy stuff. The clear-cut stuff. I'm far more torn about the more subtle, complicated ways in which Palin's gender has me tied in knots.

Perhaps it's because the ground has shifted so quickly under my feet, leaving me with only a slippery grasp of what the basic vocabulary of my beat -- feminism, women's rights -- even means anymore. Some days, it feels like I'm watching the civics filmstrip about how much progress women made on the presidential stage in 2008 burst into flames, acutely aware that in the back of the room, a substitute teacher is threading a new reel into the projector. It has the same message and some of the same signifiers -- Glass ceilings broken! Girl Power! -- but its meaning has been distorted. Suddenly it's Rudy Giuliani and Rick Santorum schooling us about pervasive sexism; Hillary Clinton's 18 million cracks have weakened not only the White House's glass ceiling, but the wall protecting Roe v. Wade; the potential first female vice president in America's 200-year history describes her early career as "your average hockey mom" who "never really set out to be involved in public affairs"; and teen pregnancy is no longer an illustrative example for sex educators and contraception distributors but for those who seek to eliminate sex education and contraception.

In this strange new pro-woman tableau, feminism -- a word that is being used all over the country with regard to Palin's potential power -- means voting for someone who would limit reproductive control, access to healthcare and funding for places like Covenant House Alaska, an organization that helps unwed teen mothers. It means cheering someone who allowed women to be charged for their rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla, who supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, who has inquired locally about the possibility of using her position to ban children's books from the public library, who does not support the teaching of sex education.

In this "Handmaid's Tale"-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we're witnessing "a new creation ... of the feminist ideal," the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it's now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: "put a skirt on." "I want her watching my kids," says Deutsch. "I want her laying next to me in bed."

Welcome to 2008, the year a tough, wonky woman won a primary (lots of them, actually), an inspiring black man secured his party's nomination for the presidency, and a television talking head felt free to opine that a woman is qualified for executive office because he wants to bed her and have her watch his kids! Stop the election; I want to get off.

What Palin so seductively represents, not only to Donny Deutsch but to the general populace, is a form of feminine power that is utterly digestible to those who have no intellectual or political use for actual women. It's like some dystopian future ... feminism without any feminists.

Palin's femininity is one that is recognizable to most women: She's the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much. The kind of woman who, as Jessica Grose at Jezebel has eloquently noted, achieves her power by doing everything modern women believed they did not have to do: presenting herself as maternal and sexual, sucking up to men, evincing an absolute lack of native ambition, instead emphasizing her luck as the recipient of strong male support and approval. It works because these stances do not upset antiquated gender norms. So when the moment comes, when tolerance for and interest in female power have been forcibly expanded by Clinton, a woman more willing to throw elbows and defy gender expectations but who falls short of the goal, Palin is there, tapped as a supposedly perfect substitute by powerful men who appreciate her charms.

But while the Republicans would have us believe that Palin can simply stand in for Hillary Clinton, there is nothing interchangeable about these politicians. We began this history-making election with one kind of woman and have ended up being asked to accept her polar opposite. Clinton's brand of femininity is the kind that remains slightly unpalatable in America. It is based on competence, political confidence and an assumption of authority that upends comfortable roles for men and women. It's a kind of power that has nothing to do with the flirtatious or the girly, nothing to do with the traditionally feminine. It is authority that is threatening because it so closely and calmly resembles the kind of power that the rest of the guys on a presidential stage never question their right to wield.

The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin's nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for, and in my mind, more than any of the intergenerational pro- or anti-Hillary crap that people wrung their hands over during the primaries, Palin's candidacy and the faux-feminism in which it has been wrapped are the first development that I fear will actually imperil feminism. Because if adopted as a narrative by this nation and its women, it could not only subvert but erase the meaning of what real progress for women means, what real gender bias consists of, what real discrimination looks like.

Perhaps that's why my reaction to Palin is so bone-deep, and why she is shaking some of my convictions about how to approach gender. When, last Sunday, I picked up the New York Post, with its front-page headline "Ladykiller: Hillary to Check Hockey Mom" next to photos of Palin in porno librarian mode and Clinton with her teeth bared, I didn't roll my eyes in disgust at the imagined cage match. Instead, I envisioned it. And I enjoyed it. I was overcome by the desire to see Clinton take on Palin, not only checking her but fouling her, smushing her, absolutely crushing her. Get her, Hillary! Don't let her channel all the energy generated by you and your Democratic supporters into anti-woman, pro-God government! You are the only one who can stop her.

It's true that the last time I had this kind of visceral yearning for a politician to save the day was on the evening of Sept. 11, when the only person whose face I wanted to see on my television was Bill Clinton's. Perhaps when the Clintons took office in my 18th year, they became imprinted on my brain as my presidential parent-figures, my ur-protectors. But it's hard not to notice that if that's the case, it's Bill I want to nurture and soothe me, and Hillary I want to show up, guns blazing Ripley-style, to surprise the mother alien just as she is about to feast on independent voters, protectively shouting, "Get away from them, you bitch!"

There I go again with the hyper-feminized anxieties. I think it's mostly that I want Hillary Clinton -- the imperfect history maker whose major selling points for "First Woman..." status, in retrospect, included the fact that she was not a Republican, not pro-life, did not believe in teaching creationism alongside evolution, had never inquired about the feasibility of banning books, understood the American economy, supported universal healthcare and did not kill wolves from planes -- to make Sarah Palin go away and stop threatening to make history I don't want to see made.

It is infuriating that Clinton, her supporters and, yes, also those Obama supporters who voiced their displeasure at the sexist treatment Clinton sometimes received, and also female voters, and also females full stop, are being implicated in feminism's bastardization.

But if we inadvertently paved the way for this, then the Democratic Party mixed the concrete, painted lanes on the road, put up streetlights and called it an interstate. The role of the left in this travesty is almost too painful to contemplate just yet.[/b]

For while it may chafe to hear Rudy Giuliani and John McCain hold forth on the injustice of gender bias, what really burns is that we never heard a peep or squawk or gurgle of this nature from anyone in the Democratic Party during the entire 100 years Hillary Clinton was running for president, while she was being talked about as a pantsuited, wrinkly old crone and a harpy ex-wife and a sexless fat-thighed monster and an emasculating nag out for Tucker Carlson's balls. Only after she was good and gone did Howard Dean come out of his cave to squeak about the amount of sexist media bias Clinton faced. That may not be pretty to recall, especially in light of the Grand Old Party's Grand Old Celebration of Estrogen. But it's true. And it's also true that if there hadn't been so much stone-cold silence, so much shoulder-shrugging "What, me sexist?" inertia from the left, if there had been a little more respect (there was plenty of attention, of the derisive and annoyed sort) paid to the unsubtle clues being transmitted by 18 million voters that maybe they were interested in this whole woman-in-the-White-House thing, then the right would not have had the fuel to power this particular weapon.

Which leads us to my greatest nightmare: that because my own party has not cared enough, or was too scared, to lay its rightful claim to the language of women's rights, that Sarah Palin will reach historic heights of power, under the most egregious of auspices, by plying feminine wiles, and conforming to every outdated notion of what it means to be a woman. That she will hit her marks by clambering over the backs, the bodies, the rights of the women on whose behalf she claims to be working, and that she will do it all under the banner of feminism. How can anybody sleep?

The same drivel we always hear. If a woman doesn't kneel at the alter of leftist victimhood, she doesn't count. Palin is hated because she is a strong woman that makes her way in the world without hating men.

The Rebecaa Traister piece reveals the workings of a seriouly confused and neurotic mind doing its best to understand, but not getting very far.

OTOH the Colter bit is scathingly funny. What is the URL for it? BTW in the interests of martian logic, I would note that unlike Hillary's "They're picking on me", to my knowledge SP has said no such thing. Its the McCain people and flunkies like Hannity who are doing so.

I'm delighted that all this seems to be helping McC, but its not anything I take seriously. IMHO MC is running the risk of overplaying it and it may well come back to bite him in the butt.

Wow, the NRO piece isn't "temperate" but the 2 Rachel posted are? The double standards being flung about where Palin is concerned demonstrate just how sunk in situational ethics most Democrats are.

The main reason I long ago abandoned my left leaning ways was the expectation that you have to march in ideological lockstep with all fellow travelers lest you be cast out as an apostate. I'd do something silly like point out how high Stalin had stacked corpses, say there are biological difference between women and men, point out recycling isn't economically sustainable, or otherwise tinkle on a PC shibboleth and would get shrieked at and shunned. Histrionics and peer pressure do not an argument make so I migrated toward political circles that had less use for them.

As that may be, the lockstep expectation works pretty good when it comes time to nominate a candidate: the various covens convene, declare which candidate best connotes the orthodoxies du jour, the assembled masses unite behind the anointed one, and then join battle against the evil republicans. Alas, this process excludes the bitter church goers and gun owners of fly over country by design, and when winning requires communication with the bitter masses it's discovered that anyone capable of doing so has long since been browbeaten into submission or excommunicated outright. Another election gets lost and stolen election teeth gnashing proceeds apace.

Bottom line, the arguments posted above will only sway those who have drunk the kool-aid, but look like a situational rehash to those your side of the aisle need to convince.

In my opinion both Salon and TRO are not angry or temperate. They are both very partisan papers with very vehement views

The main point of Salon and TRO is to rally the base and to cover issues important to the base. The main point of either newspaper is not to convert other people. Also, what ardent Republican regularly watches the daily show? (You are missing out though)

It is probably true that someone could find clips of Democratic hypocrisy as well. Politicians just want their guy to win and would use whatever argument they could against them.

I don’t participate in this forum because I think I am going to change someone political orientation. Banging my head against a brick wall is not my idea of a good time. I doubt that there are a whole of undecided people around here. Most people who have not made up their mind yet and could be easily swayed probably aren’t that interested in politics.

I also don’t think you have to drink poison to be either an Republican or a Democrat. Rational, intelligent, informed, and good - intentioned people can have different opinions.

Republicans under Bush had much more party unity than the Democrats ever did. I live in Illinois( You know where Obama lives) which would generally be included in fly-over country.

I know plenty of people who own guns and go to church and who will vote for Obama.

The problem with this election is that people would rather talk about sex, teen sex, the mommy wars, and cat fights than the issues and really who wouldn’t.

I think people should think seriously about some of these issues but I don't like politicians and their families being used as an object lesson.

The main point of Salon and TRO is to rally the base and to cover issues important to the base. The main point of either newspaper is not to convert other people. Also, what ardent Republican regularly watches the daily show? (You are missing out though)

I'm not a republican and I do occasionally watch the Daily Show; my very left wing sister makes sure I get the URL of any particularly biting piece.

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It is probably true that someone could find clips of Democratic hypocrisy as well. Politicians just want their guy to win and would use whatever argument they could against them.

Sliding in situational ethics here. When a right winger starts flailing about with the Jesus card I'll call BS on him. When some gun knucklehead starts warbling about shooting all the politicians, I'll contend against the point. When feminists start making anti-feminists remarks, true feminists should object. The fact they don't demonstrates they've quaffed the kool-aid.

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I don’t participate in this forum because I think I am going to change someone political orientation. Banging my head against a brick wall is not my idea of a good time. I doubt that there are a whole of undecided people around here. Most people who have not made up their mind yet and could be easily swayed probably aren’t that interested in politics.

Uhm, okay, abdicate away. I think ideas matter, and bad and inconsistent ones should be ridiculed. Unwillingness to defend feminist hypocrisy may be mistaken by some as an inability to do so, though.

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I also don’t think you have to drink poison to be either an Republican or a Democrat. Rational, intelligent, informed, and good - intentioned people can have different opinions.

Alas, my point was that much of the feminist response to Palin is not rational, intelligent, informed, or good.

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Republicans under Bush had much more party unity than the Democrats ever did. I live in Illinois( You know where Obama lives) which would generally be included in fly-over country.

Which I guess explains Bush's low favorable ratings among republicans. I grew up in Illinois and know Chicago ain't fly over country while downstate is, witness all the Daily v. downstate battles going on over "assault weapons" and such.

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I know plenty of people who own guns and go to church and who will vote for Obama.

Hmm, a rare breed in my experience. Certainly don't find many OHB supporters in the NRA or downstate Illinois.

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The problem with this election is that people would rather talk about sex, teen sex, the mommy wars, and cat fights than the issues and really who wouldn’t.

With most those people being the "feminists" and democrats noted in the above pieces.

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I think people should think seriously about some of these issues but I don't like politicians and their families being used as an object lesson.

All the more reason to shun left wing feminist critiques in favor of more substantive and internally consistent ones.

Look, I don't want Sarah Palin to be our next Vice President and I'd also prefer that she not be our next President. I disagree with her on just about every issue she's got a publicly-stated opinion on, except for maybe her current opinion on the Bridge to Nowhere (if not her initial assessment). Of course, those public opinions number about 5: choice; drilling; Obama's fitness for the Presidency; the media; and... well, I'm sure she's got another opinion on something that she'll tell Charlie Gibson about eventually. I got to write exactly one piece about how I disagreed with her after which it was all "not Trig's mom" this and "this is what abstinence brings to a family" that and plenty of name-calling that used to rightly horrify feminists when flung at Hillary Clinton. And then, finally, some people wrote smart things about why not to support Palin that didn't include the word "bitch" and I breathed a sigh of relief. That sigh came too soon.

1. "fuckable" 2. "Christian Stepford wife" 3. "she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread" 4. "Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms." 5. The part where she compares electing Sarah Palin to allowing child-rapist Warren Jeffs to babysit her kids. 6. The part where electing Palin "is akin to ideological brain rape." 7. "this Republican blowup doll" 8. The part where electing a Republican woman into office equals "women being downgraded to second-class, three-holed chattel." 9. "the self-abnegating, submissive female Uncle Tommies" 10. "she has done everything but volunteer for her own circumcision." 11. "She tacitly promises a roll backward into old-fashioned sexual roles" (despite being a breadwinner and the more powerful spouse). 12. "We must regard Sarah Palin as the Carmella Soprano of the GOP — an enabling wife of organized crime" 13. Being a female Republican is performing an "ideological lap dance" for men. 14. "Sarah Palin is the White House [Playboy] bunny." 15. "Here's an It Girl vice president who is easy on the eyes." 16. "She's like a grown-up version of Mary Ann from 'Gilligan's Island.'" 17. "Women, even if they are vice president, can always look pretty, worship their husbands in the fear of God and never, ever resist invasions from unwanted sperm." 18. "Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa..." 19. "She's such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty..."

So, to summarize: according to Wilson, despite being the governor of a state and a candidate for Vice President, Sarah Palin is, basically, a too-pretty Republican bimbo too stupid to realize she's being played by men, completely subservient to her husband and the men of the Republican party with few independent thoughts of her own who is unwillingly impregnated by her husband but too submissive to resist. Um, ugh? Just because she disagrees with feminists doesn't give us the right to forego our (supposedly) strongly-held beliefs about the inappropriateness of sexism.

I know plenty of Republican women who understand everything I have — or anyone else has — to say about choice or social justice or pay equity and still vote Republican. They vote Republican because they have strongly-held and often (I know this might be shocking) well-researched beliefs about everything from taxes to defense to choice issues. And I respect their right to hold those beliefs and vote those beliefs without resorting to calling them "stupid cunts" or anything else because I don't actually believe that they are stupid or cunts. I believe that they are wrong on those issues, but they're not ill-informed or tools of some nebulous patriarchal conspiracy.

So, look, I really, really want to talk about the issues I disagree with Sarah Palin on. I want to talk about her shifting position on earmarks; about how she hasn't said a word about most of the issues facing the country today; about whether 8 years as mayor of Wasilla and 2 as governor of Alaska prepared her to lead this country; about the firing scandals; about the appropriateness of airplane-assisted wolf hunts. There are lots and lots of things I want to talk about and want to rip into her about and even some good points in the midst of Wilson's sexist and disgusting hyperbole that need to be made about Sarah Palin. But I first want to stop shouting into the darkness about how sexism doesn't just hurt women when it's directed at liberal women. Being sexist to Sarah Palin hurts us by reinforcing stereotypes about women and by allowing conservatives to point fingers at us and call us hypocrites.

By assuming she's a Republican because she's too stupid to know better, we're driving the Reagan Democrats and centrist Republicans and conservative independent voters into McCain's arms, because no one wants to vote for the candidate that makes them feel stupid. This is how George Bush won two elections and this is the genius of Karl Rove's strategies — he doesn't ever make those people vote for him, he gets us to do it for him. So, stop with this shit, please. Let's try assuming Sarah Palin is a capable, intelligent politician with whom we disagree and start disagreeing with her as a politician

In case it isn't yet clear, I am glad you are part of the mix here and I am sure I am not the only one. BBG and GM have a relentless martian love of logic, but I am sure you are up to the conversation. Even if we may persuade each other rarely, I am sure that we will understand our own positions and the positions of others better for our interaction.

Thank you for the URL. I will be posting this in a couple of hard core right wing forums-- it will be fun to see the reaction.

With regard to Hillary, my distinct impression is that she DID do a "all those men are picking on me routine" during the early primaires, similar in emotional content to her early days in her husband's White House when she did the "Pretty in Pink" press conference. Also, in my unprovable opinion, her tears after losing some primaries were quite deliberate. In short, I do distinguish her actions with those of Barracuda so far.

I respect the intellectual integrity of the piece you post immediately prior to this one of mine.

I suspect that Team McCain may be peaking on this issue by overplaying it and overplaying Barracuda. I gather today that they had to backtrack on SP's record on earmarks, and may be backtracking on the Sex Ed clip they put out. The utter cynicism of both sides-- see your Colbert clip for for really crisp examples from Rove and Bloviating Bill, and see any of several posts from GM and BBG for examples from the left or your post for that matter-- is going to leave McC a bit high and dry.

So, look, I really, really want to talk about the issues I disagree with Sarah Palin on. I want to talk about her shifting position on earmarks; about how she hasn't said a word about most of the issues facing the country today; about whether 8 years as mayor of Wasilla and 2 as governor of Alaska prepared her to lead this country; about the firing scandals; about the appropriateness of airplane-assisted wolf hunts. There are lots and lots of things I want to talk about and want to rip into her about and even some good points in the midst of Wilson's sexist and disgusting hyperbole that need to be made about Sarah Palin. But I first want to stop shouting into the darkness about how sexism doesn't just hurt women when it's directed at liberal women. Being sexist to Sarah Palin hurts us by reinforcing stereotypes about women and by allowing conservatives to point fingers at us and call us hypocrites.

I'm down with most of this so long as the blade cuts both ways. Many of the earmarks Palin as governor and mayor is being excoriated over are earmarks Biden and Obama also voted for. Biden's love of the earmark vortex Amtrak is and that he coincidentally commutes home on certainly deserve the same level of scrutiny. Delaware's checkered financial history has made it an ideal abode for some of the more unsavory credit card issuers, and Biden, no doubt coincidentally, has been behind efforts to make it more difficult for those who get in over their heads with easy credit to apply for bankruptcy, as his lobbyist son backpedals from his lobbying efforts.

BHO's tabula rosa through much of his legislative life and back to his editorship of the Harvard Law Review resists analysis, and indeed was foreshadowed by various court nominations where a lack of track record was considered an asset. This makes the papers created when he was the putative executive doling out Annenburg funds with his pal William Ayers important source material. It'd be nice if the energy the MSM is applying to Palin's library inquiries et al were applied to the issues outlined above in a commensurate fashion.

The candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States of America, whose experience in small town politics, mothers´day dos and the local hockey club is her claim to fame, threatened to open the gates of Hell by attacking Russia in the event of another invasion of Georgia in a televised interview on ABC (shown today). One question for this self-opinionated upstart: Do you know what a nuclear holocaust is?

Sarah Palin, Mrs. Nobody know-it-all shreiking cow from Alaska, the joke of American politics, plied with a couple of vodkas before letting rip in front of incredulous audiences while McCain coos in the background, cuts a ridiculous figure as she strives to be taken seriously.

How can anyone whose husband is a member of the Alaska Independence Party and who is running for the Vice Presidency of the Union be taken seriously? How indeed can the Republican Party be taken seriously for not vetting this female, or have they not yet discovered the skeletons in her closet? We have.

So Sarah Palin, Mrs. Hockey Mom housewife-cum-small-town gossip merchant and cheap little guttersnipe, suppose you shut up and allowed real politicians and diplomats to do their work? Threatening Russia with a war is perhaps the most irresponsible thing anyone could do at this moment in time. Have you any idea what a nuclear holocaust is? Have you any notion of the power of Russia’s armed forces? Did you know that Russia has enough missiles to destroy any target anywhere on Earth in seconds?

And have you not forgotten, you pith-headed little bimbo from the back of beyond, that small detail about the slaughter of Russian citizens by Georgians, which started the whole debacle? So next time suppose you keep your mouth shut and while you’re at it, make sure the members of your family keep their legs shut too. Your country has enough failed mothers as it is.

Of course Palin is minimally qualified. Obama opened the door on that. The difference is that Obama earned where he is with 18 million votes or so and Palin started as the choice of one, but that's how that works. I agree with Rachel that the debate of Palin should be on issues and stands that she takes and opponents should quit underestimating or trashing her.

Exact reverse of Rachel, I want her elected because of her positions and hope that the mini-scandals and airlifted investigators don't bring her down first. We should hammer out those issue discussions one by one on their merits not just the stand of a VP candidate.

I stayed out of a previous debate or two like the gay marriage discussion in trying to avoid making me-too posts of comments already made, but I certainly agree with Crafty that I greatly appreciate the presence of opposing views on both sides here.

Conservatives are rushing to crown Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the new Ronald Reagan. And indeed there are similarities. Like Reagan, Palin has a dazzling star quality and an appeal to voters outside the conservative orbit. But there's another likeness to Reagan that conservatives may find a bit off-putting. She governs as a pragmatic conservative--with heavy emphasis on the pragmatic.

Palin, John McCain's vice presidential running mate, is a strong social and religious conservative. She opposes abortion and gay rights and, as an evangelical Christian, believes in a God-centered universe. But these matters are neither her top priorities as governor nor even her second-tier concerns. Her social conservatism has been muted.

Instead, her agenda since being elected governor in 2006 consists of oil and gas, taxes, and ethics reform. "Just look at the bills she put her name on," says John Bitney, her policy director during her first year as governor. "They speak for themselves." The bills involved a new arrangement for building a natural gas pipeline, higher taxes on oil companies, and new ethics rules covering the governor's administration and the legislature.

Those were her major initiatives. Next on Palin's list of priorities were maintaining the solvency of the pension program for teachers, cutting spending in the state's capital budget, and assuring that parents who home school their children aren't discriminated against by state regulations.

Palin has frequently voiced her support for anti-abortion bills requiring parental consent for girls under 17 and outlawing partial-birth abortions. "Alaskans know I am pro-life and have never wavered in my belief in the sanctity of every human life," she declared in April.

But she refused to introduce the pro-life measures in a special legislative session last spring devoted to the gas pipeline. "These issues are so important they shouldn't be diluted with oil and gas deliberations," she said.

Later, she declined to call a separate special session to take up the abortion bills. Her reasoning: Pro-lifers had failed to persuade her the bills could pass the state senate. Nor would she intervene to pressure two Republican senators who opposed the legislation to change their minds. Palin isn't willing "to jump out in front of the bus on things that aren't moveable" in the legislature, says state Republican chairman Randy Ruedrich.

Palin's conservatism, like Reagan's, has never been in doubt. When I talked to her last year, she described herself as "pro-business and pro-development." TheAnchorage Daily News said the spending cuts she imposed in 2007 "may be the biggest single-year line-item veto total in state history." Of course, Palin is also pro-gun.

When she attended a governor's conference in Washington last February and was interviewed on C-SPAN by Steve Scully, she endorsed "across the board" tax cuts because Americans "know best" how to spend their own money. Palin said she's "committed" to making Alaska "more of a contributing state . . . and less reliant on the federal government."

Her biggest task as governor has been to start construction of the gas pipeline to the lower 48 states. She tossed out the sweetheart contract her predecessor, Republican Frank Murkowski, had reached with three oil companies and negotiated a new deal with a Canadian company. The goal, she said, is "to feed hungry markets in our state, reduce energy costs, help secure the nation, [and] flow that energy into hungry markets across the nation. That's my mission."

Her record as governor hardly qualifies her as a doctrinaire conservative. She proposed a graduated tax on oil as the price soared, then signed a bill passed by the legislature that set the new tax rate even higher. Reagan, by the way, cut taxes in 1981 and raised them the next year.

Why did Palin push a pipeline and favor a tax hike? Bitney says the answer is simple: Alaska needs more energy as older oil fields become depleted, and the pipeline will generate jobs and revenue. As for raising taxes, Palin follows the command of the state constitution to get the maximum benefit from the state's natural resources.

Bitney says Palin never instructed her gubernatorial staff to "go after abortion" or any other issues of concern to social conservatives. In a campaign debate in 2006, she said that both evolution and creationism should be taught in public schools. "You know, don't be afraid of education," she said. "Healthy debate is so important and so valuable in our schools."

The next day she thought better of her comment. "I would not push the state board of education to add creation-based alternatives to the state's required curriculum," she said. But there shouldn't be "a prohibition against debate if [creationism] comes up in class."

As governor, Palin has appointed a commissioner of education and nine members of the state board--without applying a litmus test on creationism or evolution. And there's been no effort, either by Palin or her appointees, to add creationism to the curriculum.

Palin's most celebrated act of practical conservatism was killing the notorious Bridge to Nowhere in Ketchikan. She had endorsed it in a gubernatorial campaign debate, but changed her mind after being elected. By then, the project had become a symbol of wasteful spending, and the congressional earmark with money for it had been rescinded.

But the three members of Alaska's congressional delegation--Ted Stevens, Lisa Murkowski, and Don Young--still favored the project. Their expectation was that Palin would keep it alive with federal highway funds and state money. She refused.

The anointing of Palin as the new Reagan is surely premature. Let's say she's a potential Reagan. Like him, Palin has focused on a few big issues, while allowing others popular with conservatives to fall by the wayside. This brand of pragmatic conservatism worked for Reagan. It's worked for Palin too.

I lived in Alaska for approximately 7 years. For all its hugeness, the state is tiny population wise. I lived in a town of 2000. I traveled frequently through the Matanuska Susitna Valley which is where Wasilla is. Lots of things happen in Alaska that are kind of "bush league" (hence the expression perhaps) with regard to government and community. The people are diverse but there are strong conservative and evangelical leanings in many places. People have moved there to escape having anyone tell them how to live. Up in the remoteness of Alaska they can do it their way more easily than in the lower 48. Very independent.

Nothing that is presented in this article surprises me. Lots of communities in Alaska have the flavor of being rough around the edges and a bit wild. While Wasilla is only 30 miles from Anchorage and has many modern amenities, it is insular to live there as it is in much of Alaska. People go to Alaska to be left alone and they are fiercely independent to a fault. There is much I admire in this but there is also much that is the result of escaping a larger more complex world. It results in communities that have very unique flavors and ways of doing things. In some of them you fit in or you don't. This article in its description of Sarah Palin reminds me of all of that.

I still have friends in Alaska. Some of them are involved in politics up there. I have asked them about all of this. They expressed a lot of concern over the amount of power that is being offered to Wasilla's former mayor and Alaska's governor.

I do think that Sarah Palin reminds me of common folk in many rural communities and I can certainly see the attraction that she has for many people in the blue collar places in the country. But she reminds me of the dark side of the common folk I am afraid. Those aspects of the smaller communities where to be different is bad, where being intelligent must be hidden, and where there is a RIGHT way to think as opposed to open discourse. I am basing this on the several weeks of watching and listening to the media but also and more importantly on my personal connections with friends in Alaska who have confirmed my fears that this person shoots from the hip in a way that does not sit well with me.

I know lots of people in the more rural places that I have lived who I admire greatly, who are calm and wise, and who express the very best of what people are. In those small communities people can band together and support one another in a way that is refreshing. At times of challenge ideologies are swept away. So that is a good thing. But what I am reading and learning about this person does not remind me enough of those positive features to make me even close to being comfortable with her as vice president. In this way I think that her addition to the republican ticket, while in some ways clever, actually detracts.

What Was Feminism? By Victor Davis HansonThe Washington Times | Monday, September 15, 2008

The media went hysterical over Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and Republican nominee for vice president. She may have appeared to the public as an independent, capable professional woman, but to a particular elite she couldn't possibly be a real feminist or even a serious candidate.And that raises questions about what is — and what is not — feminism.

Feminism grew out of the 1960s to address sexual inequality. At an early age, I was mentored on most feminist arguments by my late mother. She graduated from Stanford Law School in the 1940s but then was offered only a single job as a legal secretary. Instead, she went back home to raise three children with my father, a teacher and farmer, and only returned to legal work in her 40s. She was eventually named a California superior court judge and, later, a state appellate court justice.

Hers was a common and compelling feminist argument of the times, and went something like this: Women should receive equal pay for equal work, and not be considered mere appendages of their husbands. Childrearing — if properly practiced as a joint enterprise — did not preclude women from pursuing careers. A woman's worth was not to be necessarily judged by having either too many or too few children, given the privacy of such decisions and the co-responsibility of male partners.

In such an ideal gender-blind workplace, women were not to be defined by their husband's or father's success or failure. The beauty of women's liberation was that it was not hierarchical but included the unmarried woman who drove a combine on her own farm, the corporate attorney and the homemaker who chose to home-school her children.

Women in the workplace did not look for special favors. And they surely did not wish to deny innately feminine differences. Instead, they asked only that men should not establish arbitrary rules of the game that favored their male gender.

Soon radical changes in American attitudes about birth control, abortion, dating, marriage and health care became, for some, part and parcel of women's liberation. But in its essence feminism still was about equality of opportunity, and so included women of all political and religious beliefs.

That old definition of feminism is now dead. It has been replaced by a new creed that is far more restrictive - as the controversy over Sarah Palin attests. Out of the recent media frenzy, four general truths emerged about the new feminism:

(1) There is a particular class and professional bent to the practitioners of feminism. Sarah Palin has as many kids as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she has as much of a prior political record as the once-heralded Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, who was named to the Democratic ticket by Walter Mondale in 1984 - and arguably has as much as, or more executive experience than, Barack Obama. Somehow all that got lost in the endless sneering stories about her blue-collar conservatism, small Alaskan town, five children, snowmobiling husband and Idaho college degree.

(2) Feminism now often equates to a condescending liberalism. Emancipated women who, like Mrs. Palin, do not believe in abortion or are devout Christians are at best considered unsophisticated dupes. At worst, they are caricatured as conservative interlopers, piggybacking on the hard work of left-wing women whose progressive ideas alone have allowed the Palins of the world the choices they otherwise would not now enjoy.

Apparently these feminists believe that without the ideas of Gloria Steinem on abortion, a moose-hunting PTA mom would not have made governor. The Democrat's vice presidential candidate, Joe Biden, said Mrs. Palin's election, given her politics, would be "a backward step for women."

(3) Hypocrisy abounds. Many female critics of Mrs. Palin, in Washington and New York politics and media, found their careers enhanced through the political influence of their powerful fathers, their advantageous marriages to male power players and the inherited advantages of capital. The irony is that a Sarah Palin - like a Barbara Jordan, Golda Meir or Margaret Thatcher - made her own way without the help of money or influence.

(4) Most Americans still believe in the old feminism but not this new doctrinaire liberal brand. Consequently, a struggling John McCain suddenly has shot ahead of Mr. Obama in the polls. Apparently millions of Americans like Mrs. Palin's underdog feminist saga and her can-do pluckiness. Many are offended by haughty liberal media elites sneering at someone whom, politics aside, they should be praising - for her substantial achievements, her inspirational personal story and her Obama-like charisma.

This last week we were supposed to learn about a liberated Gov. Sarah Palin. Instead the media taught us more than we ever wanted to know about what they now call feminism.

Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "A War Like No Other" (Random House).

Buchanan on his opinion of the neocons and their bid to influence Palin:

****Will the neocons who tutored George W. Bush in the ideology he pursued to the ruin of his presidency do the same for Sarah Palin?

Should they succeed, they will destroy her. Yet, they are moving even now to capture this princess of the right and hope of the party.

In St. Paul, Palin was told to cancel a meeting with Phyllis Schlafly and pro-life conservatives. McCain's operatives said Palin had to rest for her Wednesday convention speech.

Yet, on Tuesday, Palin was behind closed doors with Joe Lieberman and officials of the Israeli lobby AIPAC. There, according to The Washington Post, Palin took and passed her oral exams.

"Palin assured the group of her strong support for Israel, of her desire to see the United States move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and of her opposition to Iran's aspirations to become a nuclear power, according to sources familiar with the meeting."

AIPAC's mission, like that of Likud, is to goad America into launching air and missile strikes on any and all Iranian nuclear facilities.

AIPAC went away happy. Purred spokesman Josh Block, "We were pleased that Gov. Palin expressed her deep personal commitment to the safety and well-being of Israel."

Heading home to Alaska to prepare for her interview with Charlie Gibson, Palin was escorted by Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy guru and, until March, a hired agent of the Tbilisi regime.

Scheunemann's lobbying assignment: Bring Georgia into NATO, so U.S. troops, like 19-year-old Track Palin, will be required to fight Russia to defend a Saakashvili regime that has paid Randy and his partner $730,000.

Reportedly, a phone conversation was held between Saakashvili and Palin, in which Palin committed herself to the territorial integrity of Georgia, though South Ossetia and Abkhazia have declared independence and been recognized by Moscow, which now has troops in both.

Also on Palin's plane was Steve Biegun, formerly of Bush's National Security Council, and Scheunemann's choice to tutor her. Of Biegun, Steven Clemens of the New American Foundation says, "He will turn her into an advocate of Cheneyism and Cheney's view of national security issues."

During her interview with Gibson, Palin often took a neocon line. Three times she said that, should Israel decide to attack Iran, the United States should not "second guess" Israel's decision or interfere.

This contradicts U.S. policy. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs, has warned Israel not to attack Iran, as the United States does not want a "third front." And the Pentagon is withholding crucial weapons the Israelis want and need to carry out any such attack.

Palin also volunteered that the Russian invasion was "unprovoked," though Georgia attacked South Ossetia first. She followed up by saying that Georgia and Ukraine should be brought into NATO.

Would that mean America would have to go to war with Russia on behalf of Georgia in any new conflict, asked Gibson.

"Perhaps so," said Palin.

Scheunemann should get a fat severance check from Saakashvili for that one.

One ex-White House aide at American Enterprise Institute, asked by Tim Shipman of the Daily Telegraph if AEI sees Palin as a "project," replied: "Your word, not mine. ... But I wouldn't disagree with the sentiment. ... She's bright, and she's a blank page. She's going places, and it's worth going there with her."

In fairness to Palin, on issues like NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, her answers reflect the views of the man who chose her. She has no option at present but to follow the line laid down by Scheunemann.

But make no mistake. Sarah Palin is no neocon. She did not come by her beliefs by studying Leo Strauss. She is a traditionalist whose values are those of family, faith, community and country, not some utopian ideology.

Wasilla, Alaska, is not a natural habitat of neoconservatives.

And her unrehearsed answers to Gibson's questions reveal her natural conservatism. Asked if she agrees with the Bush Doctrine, Palin asked for clarification. "In what respect, Charlie?"

Gibson: "Do we have the right of an anticipatory self-defense?"

Yes, said Palin, "if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against (the) American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend."

Exactly. The intelligence must be legit and the threat "imminent."

Interviewed by Alaska Business Monthly in March 2007 on the surge, Palin said, "I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place."

That is not the language of empire or "benevolent global hegemony."

Palin may disappoint many conservatives in the next seven weeks by having to parrot the McCain-neocon line on NATO expansion, NAFTA and a "path to citizenship" for illegal aliens. But the battle for Sarah's soul is not over.

For, again, the lady is no neocon. Nor is the husband Todd, First Dude of Alaska and former member of the "Alaska First" Independence Party.

Don't see a link, but if this is indeed Pat Buchanan then I'm surprised he didn't raise the specter of the Illuminati and Trilateral Commission. Buchanan's Hitler apologia he recently published is just one element of a long list of rank foolishness he's been associated with.

WASILLA, AK - Records and eyewitnesses have come to light that prior to announcing her candidacy for the Vice Presidency; Sarah Palin shot a Bigfoot from a helicopter.A government helicopter was seen flying low over the Chugach National Park with what witnesses described as “a sexy librarian shooting out the side.” Employees at a local bait shop report seeing a similar woman only hours before carrying an infant in a camouflage Baby Bjorn.

The Bigfoot, or Sasquatch as it is known in scientific circles, was found dead on the outskirts of the park, just south of Wasilla, Alaska. Preliminary forensics reports confirm that an adult male Sasquatch was shot in the face with Palin’s trademark 5mm M4 Carbine Assault Rifle.

Environmental groups are in an uproar at the hunting death of a rare and notoriously reclusive species. Efforts to have the Sasquatch placed on the endangered species list have met with repeated opposition from state legislature, since protecting the ‘Missing Link’ could be seen as validating evolution.

Conservatives have immediately rallied to their party’s new star, citing that gun ownership and hunting are indelible parts of American culture. Indeed this point is hard to argue, as John Adams was notorious for having captured what he called a “Skunk Ape” and killing it with his bare hands on the White House lawn in front of a paying audience.

Neither of us ever actually met the governor of Alaska, but we grew up with her - in the small-town America despised by the leftwing elite.

One gal-pal classmate of my wife's has even traveled from New York's Finger Lakes to Alaska to hunt moose with her husband. (Got one, too.) And no, Ms. Streisand, she isn't a redneck missing half her teeth - she's a lawyer.

The sneering elites and their mediacrat fellow travelers just don't get it: How on earth could anyone vote for someone who didn't attend an Ivy League school? And having more than 1.7 children marks any woman as a rube. (If Palin had any taste, her teenage daughter would've had a quiet abortion in a discreet facility.)

And what kind of retro-Barbie would stay happily married to her high-school sweetheart? Ugh. She even kills animals and eats them. (The meat and fish served in the upscale bistros patronized by Obama supporters appears by magic - it didn't really come from living things. . .)

Palin has that hick accent, too. And that busy-mom beehive 'do. Double ugh! Bet she hasn't even read Ian McEwan's latest novel and can't explain Frank Gehry's vision for a new architecture. She and her blue-collar (triple ugh!) husband don't even own a McMansion, let alone an inherited family compound on the Cape.

And she wants to be vice president?

The opinion-maker elites see Sarah Palin clearly every time they look up from another sneering article in The New Yorker: She's a country-bumpkin chumpette from a hick state with low latte availability. She's not one of them and never will be. That's the real disqualifier in this race.

Now let me tell you what those postmodern bigots with their multiple vacation homes and their disappointing trust-fund kids don't see:

Sarah Palin's one of us. She actually represents the American people.

When The New York Times, CNN, the NBC basket of basket cases and all the barking blog dogs insult Palin, they're insulting us. When they smear her, they're smearing every American who actually works for a living, who doesn't expect a handout, who doesn't have a full-time accountant to parse the family taxes, who believes in the Pledge of Allegiance and who thinks a church is more than just a tedious stop on daughter Emily's 100K wedding day.

Go ahead, faux feminists and Hollywood deep thinkers: Snicker at Sarah America's degree from the University of Idaho, but remember that most Americans didn't attend Harvard or Princeton as a legacy after daddy donated enough to buy his kid's way in.

Go ahead, campaign strategists: Mock Americans who go to church and actually pray. But you might want to run the Census numbers first.

And go right ahead: Dismiss all of us who remember how, on the first day of deer season, our high school classrooms were half empty (not a problem at Andover or Exeter).

That rube accent of Palin's? It's a howler. But she sounds a lot more like the rest of us than a Harvard man or a Smithie ever will.

Why does Sarah Palin energize all of us who don't belong to the gilded leftwing circle? Because she's us. We sat beside her in class. We hung out after school (might've even shared a backseat combat zone on prom night). And now she lives next door, raising her kids.

For the first time since Ronald Reagan, our last great president, we, the people, see a chance that one of us might have a voice in governing our country.

Speaking of Reagan (Eureka College, Illinois), every chief executive we've had since the Gipper snapped his final salute as president has had the imprimatur of an Ivy League university. And we've gone from bad to worse:

* George Herbert Walker Bush: Yale.

* William Jefferson Clinton: Georgetown, Oxford, Yale Law.

* George W. Bush: Yale and Harvard Business School.

The first lacked the sense to finish the job in Desert Storm; the second lacked the guts to go after al Qaeda when it was just a startup - and the third, well, let's just say he disappointed our low expectations.

Now we have the Ivy League elite's "he's not only like us but he's a minority and we're so wonderful to support him" candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (Columbia and Harvard Law).

Our country can't afford another one of these clowns. Harvard isn't the answer - Harvard's the problem.

So here's the message Palin is sending on behalf of the rest of us (the down-market masses Dems love at election time and ignore once the voting's done): The rule of the snobs is over. It's time to give one of us a chance to lead.

Sen. John McCain's one of us, too. He raised hell at Annapolis (quadruple ugh: military!), and he'll raise the right kind of hell in Washington.

McCain's so dumb he really loves his country.

Sarah Palin's dumb that way, too. How terribly unfashionable.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."

If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin.

To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman.

Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman.

Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a more complicated picture has emerged.

As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?)

And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively).

Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother.

Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it.

It was fun while it lasted.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

I was on vacation the last week and didn't watch any interviews or monitor things online until I got home. With that handicap, I expect that this is more of an artifact of "gotcha" being played by our corrupt media rather than any lack of ability on Palin's behalf.

Hope you enjoyed the vacation.GM; you are usually well read and informed albeit sometimes over zealous but take some time and catch up and you will see that unfortunately Kathleen Parker has a valid point.

Journalists continue to ask, “What was John McCain thinking in selecting the gaffe-prone Gov. Sarah Palin?”

In what has now become a disturbing pattern, the Alaska governor seems either unable or unwilling to avoid embarrassing statements that are often as untrue as they are outrageous. Recently, for example, in an exclusive interview with news anchor Katie Couric, Palin gushed, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’ ” Apparently the former Alaskan beauty queen failed to realize that in 1929 there was neither widespread television nor was Franklin Roosevelt even President.

Sometimes the Idaho-native Palin seems to confuse and embarrass her own running mate. Shortly after her nomination, she introduced a “John McAmerica;” then she referred to the Republican ticket as the “Palin-McCain administration;” and finished by calling Sen. Obama, “Senator George Obama.” The Palin gaffes seem to be endless: on her way to Washington to meet the national press corps, Palin, the mother of five, once again stumbled — this time characterizing Senator Biden as “Congressman Joe Biden,” who, she chuckled, was “good looking.”

But then Palin only compounded that growing image of shallowness when introducing her own snow-mobiling husband Todd, “as drop-dead gorgeous!” And when asked about the controversial McCain ad suggesting that Barack Obama had introduced explicit sex education classes to pre-teenagers, the Christian fundamentalist Palin scoffed that it was “terrible” and that she would have never had allowed such an unfair clip to run — before retracting that apology under pressure from the now exasperated McCain campaign staff. But then, according to press reports, wild Sarah only made things worse still by announcing that paying higher taxes was the “patriotic” thing for Americans to do.

This week, the gun-owning, moose-hunting Palin also promised blue-collar Virginians that she would protect their firearm rights — even, if need be, from her own running-mate: “I guarantee you, John McCain ain’t taking my shotguns, so don’t buy that malarkey. Don’t buy that malarkey. They’re going to start peddling that to you. I got two. If he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem. I like that little over and under, you know? I’m not bad with it. So give me a break. Give me a break.”

Palin may have had some experience in Alaskan politics, but at times the former small-town mayor seems unaware of the pressures of running a national campaign in a diverse society. For example, Palin — who has had past associations with reactionary groups — caused a storm earlier when she characterized Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama in seemingly racialist terms: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Such stereotyping suggested that the Alaskan was not aware of the multiracial nature of American politics — an impression confirmed when in her earlier gubernatorial run, she had once suggested that to enter a donut shop was synonymous with meeting an Indian immigrant.

The recently-elected Governor Palin was further rattled by media scrutiny, when, in a moment of embarrassing candor, she confessed, “Mitt Romney is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly he might have been a better pick than me.” That confession followed an earlier deer-in-the-headlights moment, when the nearly hysterical Palin urged a wheel-chair bound state legislator to rise: “Sally, stand up, let the people see you!”

The Palin gaffes are no surprise to those who have followed closely her previous races. They cite her aborted governor campaign, when she was forced to pull out after fraudulently claiming that her working-class family had been Idaho coal miners — in an apparent case of plagiarism of British Prime Minister candidate Neal Kinnock’s stump speech. Palin once boasted: “I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Sarah Palin’s the first in his family ever to go to University . . . is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright . . . who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Idaho and would come up after 12 hours and play volleyball?” It did not help Palin that reporters quickly discovered that while as a student at the University at Idaho she had been caught plagiarizing and also misrepresented her undergraduate transcript.

Most recently on the campaign trail, Governor Palin apparently promised a vocal supporter that the United States would certainly not burn coal to produce electricity — even though roughly half of current U.S. power production is coal-fired. The same uncertainty seems to extend to foreign policy. Under cross-examination, Palin appeared confused about her own recent trips abroad, first claiming that her helicopter had “been forced down” in Afghanistan, although other passengers suggested the landing was a routine cautionary measure to avoid a possible snowstorm. Palin likewise had alleged that she was shot at while in Baghdad’s Green Zone, although there was no evidence from her security detail that she had, in fact, come under hostile fire.

The Obama campaign has lost no time in hammering at the former hockey-mom Palin’s foreign-policy judgment, alleging that shortly after September 11 she once suggested sending $200 billion to Iran as a “good will” gesture, and reminding journalists that in repeated interviews, Palin had called for dividing Iraq into three separate nations, despite Iraqi resistance to such outside interference. Palin, the nominal head of the Alaskan National Guard, has also falsely insisted that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen had once suggested that we were losing the war in Iraq and that the Bush administration had sent Undersecretary of State William Burns to Teheran to meet with Iranian officials.

In response to Palin’s unbridled misstatements, journalists have coined the term “Palinism” — the serial voicing of sweeping declarations that are either insulting, or untrue — or both. No wonder rumors mount that Sen. McCain is now seeking a possible graceful exit for the gaffe-prone Palin, even as the Obama campaign continues to make the contrast with their own sober and circumspect Joe Biden.

I was suturing a cut on the hand of a favorite patient and friend of mine, an old Texas rancher who'd caught his hand in a gate while he was working cattle. While I worked, we talked and the conversation came around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President.

The old rancher said, 'Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle.'

Not being familiar with the term, I asked, 'What's a post turtle?'

The old rancher said, 'When you're driving down a country road and you spy a fencepost with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle.'

He saw that I looked puzzled, so he continued, 'You know she didn't get up there by herself; she doesn't belong up there; she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with, and you just want to help the poor thing get down."

First, I would like to see all the Sarah doubters and detractors in the Beltway/Manhattan corridor eat their words.Eat them.Sarah Palin is the real deal. Five weeks on the campaign trail, thrust onto the national stage, she rocked tonight’s debate.She was warm, fresh, funny, confident, energetic, personable, relentless, and on message. She roasted Obama’s flip-flops on the surge and tea-with-dictators declarations, dinged Biden’s bash-Bush rhetoric, challenged the blame-America defeatism of the Left, and exuded the sunny optimism that energized the base in the first place.McCain has not done many things right. But Sarah Palin proved tonight that the VP risk he took was worth it.Her performance also underscored the underhandedness of the hatchet job editors at ABC News and CBS News, which failed to capture her solid competence on the whole array of foreign and domestic policy issues on the debate table tonight. (I didn’t care for all the “greed” rhetoric, but I understand they are trying to appeal to independents and Dems. They’re trying to win the election.)Pause to reflect on this: She matched — and trumped several times — a man who has spent his entire adult life on the political stage, run for president twice, and as he mentioned several times, chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.Sarah Palin looked presidential.Joe Biden looked tired.Sarah made history.Biden is history.***Prediction: Watch for a whole new, severe strain of Palin Derangement Syndrome to begin tonight.They hated her before tonight. They are going to pour on more unfathomable hate at a level we have never seen before.Sarah, we’re praying for you.***Frank Luntz’s focus group agrees: Sarah rocks.Reader Brett had a sharp observation: “Palin amazingly avoided falling into a trap when Gwen Ifill asked whether she agreed with Biden on a particulalr issue — instead Palin repeated the question and stated her answer — rather than say “I agree” — like Obama said so many times at an earlier debate.”Yes, that was excellent.***Previous: Liveblogging the debate.***As for Gwen “Age of Obama” Ifill, she behaved herself for the most part. She was duly chastened. But the questions and the controversy and the double standards don’t go away. As I wrote in my column this week:It’s not the color of your skin, sweetie. It’s the color of your politics. Perhaps Ifill will be able to conceal it this week. But if the “stunning” “Breakthrough” she’s rooting for comes to pass on January 20, 2009, nobody will be fooled.Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I agree Ifill behaved, indeed I thought she did a rather good job-- though I suspect her personal policitics being put in the spotlight had something to do with that.

I thought SP did quite well. Although not able to wonk with Biden on some of the points and there were some passages where he scored well, she showed a strong ability to define things on her terms and an impressive abiilty to absorb and articulate a lot of material-- to operate at this level after 5 weeks on the national stage I find genuinely impressive. She did very well keeping track of Biden's points and answering them-- and ducking the ones that she wanted to. I thought she did well by steering the conversation to energy matters where she was able to show substance, and did VERY well with "the vision thing", leaving Biden looking the wonk.

Palin communicated and showed very well; polls show Biden "won", but I think Palin did better than expected so she should get some points.

I think my one frustration is that she simply didn't answer most of the questions, she just repeated her memorized mantra taught to her byher handlers. In a "debate" I like to hear substance and an answer to a direct question and not repeatedly see avoidance (why?), ducking broad generalities or repeatedly reverting to a speech on another unrelated topic that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It would have been much more interesting and I wish Ifill had insisted that both participants "simply answer the question". She did once, butPalin avoided her - too tough for Palin to do I guess. But is that asking to much? That would not have been partisanship but just a good debate.

And to say that you were genuinely impressed with her ability to operate at this level after only 5 weeks on the national stage; heck, the elections are five weeks awayand if elected, she will be "a heartbeat away from being President". Now is not the time to BEGIN learning the subjects assuming she even has the intellectto even do so. And Biden might be a "wonk", but Palin looks the airhead. I'ld rather have the wonk. He's qualified, she's not.

Mother of all gaffes”POSTED AT 1:40 PM ON OCTOBER 3, 2008 BY ED MORRISSEY

Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House has followed the wars in Lebanon more closely than most bloggers, and Joe Biden’s assertion that the US and France “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon” has him gasping for breath. Calling it “completely insane”, Rick deconstructs the rest of the answer on this question to seriously challenge whatever credentials Biden claims on foreign policy. First, here’s Biden’s answer in its entirety, emphases mine:

BIDEN: Gwen, no one in the United States Senate has been a better friend to Israel than Joe Biden. I would have never, ever joined this ticket were I not absolutely sure Barack Obama shared my passion. But you asked a question about whether or not this administration’s policy had made sense or something to that effect. It has been an abject failure, this administration’s policy. In fairness to Secretary Rice, she’s trying to turn it around now in the seventh or eighth year.

Here’s what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, “Big mistake. Hamas will win. You’ll legitimize them.” What happened? Hamas won. When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel. The fact of the matter is, the policy of this administration has been an abject failure. And speaking of freedom being on the march, the only thing on the march is Iran. It’s closer to a bomb. Its proxies now have a major stake in Lebanon, as well as in the Gaza Strip with Hamas.

We will change this policy with thoughtful, real, live diplomacy that understands that you must back Israel in letting them negotiate, support their negotiation, and stand with them, not insist on policies like this administration has.

Rick couldn’t believe his ears:

Of course, no one “threw Hezb’allah out of Lebanon.” They have been there all along as the expert above notes. The Lebanese people threw the Syrians out of Lebanon, with no help from liberal Democrats like Biden and Obama, but with a great big behind the scenes lift from France and the US. It was we who put the bug in King Abdullah’s ear to lobby the Syrians to get while the going was good as the French worked directly on Baby Assad. The combination worked wonderfully and the Syrians left in a hurry – after a couple of million Lebanese took to the streets in a breathtaking show of defiance to tyranny and love of freedom.

Joe Biden – or any rational human being on this planet anyway – never recommended that NATO be dispatched to “fill the vacuum.” It is a lie. If it had been proposed. Colin Powell would have been laughed out of the room – something we should do to Biden at this point because he compounded his gaffe by evidently believing that not having NATO as a buffer between Israel and Hezb’allah – an absolute impossibility mind you – led to the ascension of Hezb’allah in Lebanon as a political power.

Where has Biden been for the last 20 years – at least since the Taif Accords were signed in 1989 which gave Hezb’allah a free hand in the southern part of the country and then pressuring the Lebanese government to formally designate them as “the resistance” to Israel? Hezb’allah’s rise is directly related to Iran’s funding of their proxy to the tune of around $250 million a year.

Like Rick, I cannot recall anyone seriously suggesting that NATO occupy the sub-Litani region of Lebanon. NATO already found itself stretched to meet its commitments in Afghanistan, although Germany and Italy did find troops to contribute to the beefed-up presence in UNIFIL, the same multinational force that had sat idle while Hezbollah armed itself after the Israeli withdrawal from the region a few years ago — and then turned around and did the same thing after the Israeli withdrawal in 2006.

Some people assumed that Biden meant that the US and France kicked Syria out of Lebanon, but Michael Totten — who has spent considerable time in Lebanon — doesn’t buy that explanation, either:

And did Biden and Senator Barack Obama really say NATO troops should be sent into Lebanon? When did they say that? Why would they say that? They certainly didn’t say it because NATO needed to prevent Hezbollah from returning–since Hezbollah never went anywhere.

I tried to chalk this one up as just the latest of Biden’s colorful gaffes. Did he mean to say “we kicked Syria out of Lebanon?” But that wouldn’t make any more sense. First of all, the Lebanese kicked Syria out of Lebanon. Not the United States, and not France. But he clearly meant to say Hezbollah, not Syria, because he correctly notes just a few sentences later that Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s government. He wasn’t talking about Syria. He was talking about Hezbollah all the way through, at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of his outlandish assertion.

And all of this points out the folly of presidential-level meetings with the leadership of Iran, without the precondition of them ending their support for the terrorist group Hezbollah. Iran funds Hezbollah and their terrorist activities, which Biden rightly decries. But if Biden doesn’t want Hezbollah to be a “legitimate part” of the Lebanese government for that reason, why would he legitimize their sponsors with presidential-level meetings without first insisting on the end of that support?

It’s a completely incoherent policy as well as a terrible misreading of history and the present status of the region. And if Biden can’t get this right, what does that say about his running mate, who chose Biden to fill the gaps in his own foreign-policy portfolio?

To be fair, BOTH candidates misspoke, overstated, and stretched the truth last night. But I just wish Palin had answeredthe questions rather than simply dodging them or ignoring most of them.

Palin made a point somewhere in another interview. To paraphrase, she said she was criticized for not having the perfect answers in Couric's interview and she has been criticized for being too vague and clueless. Palin commented that (to paraphrase)"she's damned either way". I understand her point, and sympathize, however I would rather tolerate a few gaffes (do I care if she pronouncesa general's name wrong - give her a break!) than simply avoiding the question as she seemed to do time after time last night.

As a general rule, I agree about "answering the question", but where I diverge is when it surrenders that candidate's communication with the people. The media are not a gatekeeper to the American people whose permission is needed to communicate. Sometimes, one needs simply to blow them off and define the agenda as one will-- and let the people make of it what they will.

I'll agree ducking some questions for which she wasn't ready may have been a part of it, I heartily approve of her defining herself and what she thinks important directly with the people.